Haven’t had time to analyze this election promise, so was very happy to see a CPRsouth alumnus take an excellent run at it. Usually, these free Wi-Fi services have lower speeds compared to the average home connection, and often come with a data or a time cap. Perth, for example, offers free public Wi-Fi in […]

The situations in the US and our countries are very different: we have more competition at the access-network level, we have more people who are not connected and our retail pricing schemes are more rational. But it’s illuminating that the FCC is not as excited about zero rating as some other people: Under the FCC’s […]

I’m pretty sure we (LIRNEasia and RIA) were the only ones to have asked this question in Asia and Africa. Finally, surveys conducted in Africa and Asia found that more than half of the people that weren’t on the Internet didn’t know what it was. The Report. But I do not think the “more than […]

At the end of its First Quarter of operations, Telenor Myanmar reported 3.4 million subscribers. That’s a hefty number, given Ooredoo had a head start and MPT also got energized during that time. But the real story is that 40 percent of that number (1.36 million) were daily active data users. This is huge. I’d […]

Internet.org, Facebook’s effort to give people free Internet (or at least 38 websites and services that do not include Google) was launched earlier this month. This has resulted in a quantum leap in discussions of various aspects of net neutrality, including ones that connect the debate in the rich countries to our reality that is […]

A “New Mobile Weather Stations”, notably made from local parts, fast delivers the rainfall forecast to the Sri Lankan farmers through text messages. It alerts them six hours ahead of excessive rain. That’s good enough for the farmers to take precaution. This device costs only $250 as opposed to $10,000 for standard mobile weather stations. […]

One of the most important ways by which research influences policy is for the researcher to become a policy maker. In 2006-07 Harsha de Silva was leading LIRNEasia’s ag info research. As Deputy Minister for Planning and Economic Affairs, this is what he’s telling audiences now: Farmers are not poor because they don’t get the […]

Discussions on net neutrality usually generate more heat than light. Based on her star turn at IGF 2014 in Istanbul where she sought to bring data from the trenches to the soaring abstractions that characterise the debate, LIRNEasia CEO has been invited to speak at a high-profile panel in Barcelona. The panel description.

This is a first for us. Our findings on Facebook users > Internet users in some countries that was reported in Quartz has been translated into Arabic and published by Al Jazeera. It’s not like anyone at LIRNEasia reads Arabic, but we were alerted to this by the kind folk at IDRC.

Demand-side surveys add tremendous value in many areas of research; Assessing Quality of Service (QoS) for mobile, fixed and broadband services isn’t one of them. Certainly not when it involves a perception survey. The Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) attempts to understand the user satisfaction of availability and QoS for mobile cellular, fixed and […]

NTC conducted a second public hearing on its proposed memorandum circular on broadband QoS. LIRNEasia Research Fellow, Grace Mirandilla-Santos reiterated LIRNEasia’s recommendations that diagnostics should take into consideration consumer experience, must be transparent and results published in a format that consumers can understand and use, should help inform consumers’ decisions when availing of services (e.g., publishing […]

First results from Telenor Myanmar, from Telecom Paper. Telenor ended its first quarter in Myanmar with 3.406 million mobile customers. The new mobile operator generated NOK 287 million in revenues in Q4 2014 and an EBITDA loss of NOK 248 million. It spent NOK 598 million in Q4 and NOK 4.28 billion in all 2014 […]

Online edition of The Atlantic has reproduced the piece of Leo Mirani that refers to LIRNEasia’s 2012 findings on Internet being eclipsed by Facebook. Jonathan Zittrain of MIT has posted this article on his Facebook page. And that is the beauty of a good research.